The majority of people who aspire to write a book believe that writing the words is the most difficult aspect. They envision themselves at a desk in a peaceful location, such as a corner table in a well-lit café or a rented cabin, overcoming the discomfort of a blank page until something genuine appears. And it’s challenging. No one is acting otherwise. It’s not the most difficult part, though, and first-time writers almost always realize this only after they’ve lost months or even years due to a misconception about what writing a book actually entails.
It turns out that about 20% of the work is contained in the manuscript. Revision, structural editing, querying agents, audience building, understanding the business side of publishing, and then starting over with the next project make up the remainder. Skilled writers are aware of this. They are no longer shocked by it because they have experienced enough drafting and dismantling cycles. However, the realization that completing a draft is only the start of a much longer process can be truly depressing for someone starting to write their first book, and it almost always takes them by surprise.
Probably the most harmful misconception is the one about editing. When you ask a novice writer what editing entails, they typically explain grammar checks, rewording awkward sentences, and correcting typos. They are not envisioning developmental or structural editing, which is the more difficult and confusing task of reading an entire manuscript and discovering that the protagonist’s motivation is unclear until page ninety, that the pacing collapses in the middle third, or that a subplot introduced in chapter four never pays off. For this type of editing, the author must simultaneously hold the entire book in their mind and be prepared to dissect passages that took weeks to write. It resembles renovation more than polishing. The majority of writers are unaware of this beforehand, and when they do come across it, their natural tendency is to reject rather than accept it.
The procrastination trap of arriving early and staying late is related to this. Momentum is killed in a way that is difficult to recover from when you have the urge to edit as you write, perfecting each sentence before continuing, or fixing the paragraph from yesterday before continuing today. This habit may seem responsible, like craftsmanship, but it may actually be more akin to avoidance. You can edit a poorly written page. There is nothing to work with on a blank page. Every seasoned writer eventually learns to turn off their inner critic while they are drafting and save their judgment for later. It would save a ton of time to learn this early. After their first unfinished manuscript, most people discover it.
Publishing’s business reality is education in and of itself. Online writing communities are full of people who completed their books with the sincere hope that a well-written, captivating story would find its way to readers with little extra work. That is not how it operates. Writing a pitch letter, waiting months for responses, gathering rejections, improving the pitch, and repeating this cycle for as long as it takes—sometimes years—are all part of the traditional publishing process. Before it sold, Bonnie Garmus’s first book received 98 rejections before becoming a bestseller and Netflix series. That figure is not out of the ordinary. It’s practically the standard. The community-building process should ideally begin long before the book is finished, not after, as publishers are increasingly expecting authors to arrive with an existing audience or platform.
First-time writers are plagued by a specific type of perfectionism that can be quite harmful. The constant editing of chapter one, the hesitation to share work with beta readers, and the feeling that the manuscript needs a little more time before it’s ready to be seen are all examples of what appears to be care but actually functions more like fear. It wasn’t until he was sixty-six that Frank McCourt published Angela’s Ashes. At the age of 73, Harriet Doerr published her first book and was awarded the National Book Award. In her 40s, Laura Ingalls Wilder began writing, but it wasn’t until her 60s that she achieved success. They weren’t waiting for the work to be flawless. In their different ways, they were waiting for it to be finished. Many writers would avoid paralysis if they realized the significant difference between those two things sooner.
Looking back, seasoned writers often say that the first book teaches you how to write a book, and the second is where you actually put that knowledge to use. Although it reframes the process in a helpful way, this is not particularly consoling advice when you’re in the middle of your first manuscript. It’s not an error to have a draft that seems like a failure, with scenes that don’t quite work, uneven pacing, and structural issues. It is the necessary expense of learning something that is truly impossible to teach in any other way. Nearly all working authors have a rejected manuscript in a drawer, and very few would trade the experience of writing it.
It’s not really about craft or publishing mechanics that most aspiring writers learn too late. It’s easier than that: getting started is more important than being prepared. The book that is completed with flaws will always be more authentic than the one that is being refined in someone’s imagination. This is something that most writers eventually discover. Early learners are the ones who complete it.
Chloe Olliver is senior editor at vclib.org, where she leads editorial coverage of literary criticism, political commentary, cultural analysis, and the evolving relationship between literature and public life across New York City and beyond. With a career spanning the intersection of literary journalism, political commentary, and educational publishing, Chloe brings both rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an accessible editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant.